


A Hole in the Universe

by RavenclawConspiracy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, FitzSimmons - Freeform, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Non-Linear Narrative, Technobabble, Time Travel, but it's funny technobabble, except the happy ending is for other people, too much technobabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-08-20 10:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20226445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavenclawConspiracy/pseuds/RavenclawConspiracy
Summary: There’s an object that is called the GRPO-395 Anomaly on the standardized space maps.At least, there is in one timeline.Because if the universe thinks it can keep Fitzsimmons apart via the Snap, it's very VERY wrong.





	A Hole in the Universe

This story isn’t in chronological order in any manner whatsoever.

### Informational Interlude

There’s an object that is called the GRPO-395 Anomaly on the standardized space maps. On sensors, it appears to be somewhat similar to a black hole, although it slightly is too small. But looking at it, it’s clear it’s not a black hole, because black holes do not look like that…black holes do not technically look like anything, but their accretion disk is usually a spiraling circle to darkness. GRPO-395, on the other hand, has wobbling silver edges and a glowing white center that sometimes changed shape, usually showing as a long double pointed oval. Most surrounding space-faring culture called it ‘The Tear’ or ‘The Hole in the Universe’ or a term like that because it looked like someone had taken a silver-tipped knife and slashed a hole in the universe itself.

It was a strange coincidence that the premise of those names were mostly correct.

### 2018 CE

Daisy followed along behind Simmons, with the rest of the team walking farther back. They’d found Enoch’s ship with a minimum of fuss orbiting Jupiter, and had just docked.

“This way, Jemma Simmons.” said Enoch, as they entered the Chronocrom’s ship. “I have started the process to unfreeze Fitz, he should be awake momentarily.”

And he was. He blinked his way out of the cryogenic chamber. “Jemma? You found me first?” Daisy smiled at her other best friend, even if things had been a bit strained between them recently. But that had been the other Fitz. This Fitz hadn’t turned into the Doctor and cut into her. If she could do anything about it, this Fitz never would turn into the Doctor. She smiled as Simmons kissed him.

“There has been a change of plan, Fitz,” said Enoch. “The timeline was altered, and-” he stopped mid-sentence and stared behind Daisy. “What is happening?”

Daisy turned back towards the team she’d outpaced, and didn’t see anything weird, except that Elana was staring in horror at…some floating dust? “Mack?!” Elana said, and only then did she notice Mack wasn’t there. Then Davis staggered a bit, lurching into Piper, and, to Daisy’s horror, turned into some floating black dust that almost immediately disappeared.

She looked back, and Fitz and Simmons were just as shocked as she was. Then they reacted again, and she turned around just in time to see dust where Piper had been, leaving Elana completely alone where she was.

And then there was an anguished cry of “Jemma!” from Fitz, and seconds later dust wafted past.

### Informational Interlude

Imagine a ship, in orbit about a planet. It contains approximately 100 tons of Pym-particle-shrunk purified gravitonium. Gravitonium, for those who are unaware, is a liquid that translates other sorts of energy into gravity waves. Now, imagine that shrunken gravitonium hit with a Hydra-created super-laser for hours. Interestingly, shrunken gravitonium creates shrunken gravity, and the gravity waves are fairly random when gravitonium is not spinning, so the entire thing really did nothing.

Until it was given a fast spin and unshrunk. And the entire rotating blob expanded outward, exploding out of the ship.

This, in itself, did not…anything. It sounds like it should have, but even at its strongest, it would maybe jolt the planet below a few feet in orbit, and then dissipated, because the gravitonium rotation had been disrupted enough by punching out through and consuming the ship. A few earthquakes, maybe. A few minutes of panic.

But there was, quite deliberately, something else on the ship. 13 pounds of a strange substance stolen from a misguided nuclear experiment on Earth in the 1940s.

### 2013 CE

Daisy had just knocked out an incredibly young-faced version of herself about to enter Ian Quinn’s estate. She stared down at herself. Supposedly, the Doctor was now sending a copy of the _original_ audio back to the people on the bus, so everyone there, including a younger version of ‘himself’, could hear it. They wouldn’t know events had been diverted until later.

She’d been almost thirty when this entire time-travel thing had started, and honestly, it felt she’d been at it years now. They’d tried multiple times to stop Thanos but nothing worked, but they’d kept trying. Neither of them bothered to count how much time had passed for them subjectively, with their time hopping. And she was looking down at a version of herself that was just twenty-five and completely innocent. Weird. The last time she’d been innocent like that was…2018?

### Informational Interlude

For an analogy of what the strange substance was on the ship, imagine you are a stick figure, drawn on a sheet of paper, and you think your universe is two-dimensional. And there’s a sheet of paper below you, also with things drawn on it, although it’s unknown what they look like, as this lower sheet of paper is inaccessible. Except that drawings, on both our sheet and the lower sheet, in the strictest technical sense, have three dimensions, even if one of them is a few millimeters of ink sticking out of the paper. It’s there, but it’s generally considered a mere technicality of a dimension. But it is possible, with a great amount of energy expended here, to ‘bend’ our sheet downward hard enough to ‘rub’ on the sheet below, and some of the ink on that sheet will rub off. And you will get a thing called sometimes called ‘Darkforce Energy’ and sometimes called ‘Zero Matter’, as it is neither properly energy or matter but a thing that is not part of this universe at all.

You can also go the other way, to the sheet of paper ‘above’ this one, and get a different thing, called Lightforce energy. The Lightforce dimension is much harder to reach, our sheet of paper doesn’t want to bend in that direction for much the same reason our universe is full of matter and not anti-matter, it’s an inherent asymmetry in the laws of the universe. But it is possible to reach it.

Both of those energies have attractions to more of themselves. Which means they are either trying to get back to their own ‘sheet’, or, if held in place, trying to pull more here. Neither of those energies are particularly safe to use in any manner, although Roxxon Energy Corporation has been trying, and there are hints of a pair of superheroes in New Orleans who have figured something out.

One thing no one has ever been crazy enough to do was to introduce Darkforce energy unevenly to a wobbling rotating super-dense mass. When that happened, that side of the rotating mass slipped in one direction out of the universe as the Darkforce energy tried to leave, and in response the other side tilted the other way into the Lightforce side, and in what was possibly the most energetic pinwheel that ever existed, Darkforce and Lightforce started getting pulled into this universe, rotating through the other side, and looping back around until they came full circle and managed to exit back in the correct universe.

This was not actually the problem. It was an insane light show, and there was probably some deep ‘yin/yang’ insights for people of a certain philosophical bent looking at it from above, with the spirals of black and white, but that wasn’t technically the problem. The problem was this massive pinwheel was made of gravitonium. The stuff that turns energy into gravity waves. Almost any form of energy, in fact.

Like, for example, the inter-dimensional energies called Darkforce and Lightforce.

The result was gravity waves that not only were impossibly strong, but were no longer entirely pointed within the universe. The rotation was tilted outside of the universe, so the gravity waves were also.

### 1092 CE

It had been easier to get to their last stop than Daisy and the Doctor had assumed. Tourists were still allowed, which was utter nonsense considering what was going on, but it was extremely helpful for the plan. So they’d gotten a room. They still had plenty of funds, and wouldn’t need them anymore, so they’d gotten a rather nice one. At that point, they had technically won, their target was already in their grasp after slipping through their fingers so many times. They could kill him at any moment. The Doctor had been surprisingly in agreement that the timing should be poetic and had agreed to delay it until the exact moment, as long as there had been a failsafe to go off a bit later.

Daisy looked at the Doctor. “Can I…say goodbye? Can I talk to Fitz?”

He frowned and looked what they’d brought with them.

“Really? I’ve been with you for…god knows how many years and you think I might have gotten cold feet at a few minutes out?”

He shrugged. “I guess it can’t hurt. And as much as I want to see this, it wouldn’t even have time to register.” He smiled at her, or at least the closest the Doctor ever came to a smile. “And I’m doing this for him, he deserves to know. So…tell Fitz we’re getting her back.”

“I will.” Daisy promised, which although a lie, it was a necessary lie, and she watched as the Doctor’s face smoothed out and the constant menace his face had projected seemed to vanish.

“Hey.” Daisy said.

Her somewhat shy and incredibly nerdy friend blinked at her. “What? Where am I? What happened?”

### Informational Interlude

To introduce yet another scientific theory into all this, and your narrator promises this is the last one, there is a concept in the general theory of relativity called ‘frame-dragging’, where massive rotating objects can pull parts of spacetime along with them. The effect is very small but can be noticed.

And the planet that the ship/gravitonium blob was in orbit around, all its moons, the star it orbited, all the other planets of that solar system, and all surrounding space for approximately three quarters of a light-year were ‘frame dragged’ very slightly, in directions that matter was not supposed to go. Of course, as the rotation of the gravitonium wasn’t very symmetrical after going through the body of a ship, the resulting gravity waves were not very clean, so matter would get drug ‘upward off the paper’ one second and ‘downward below the paper’ the next.

It was as if the stick figures had been lifted off the paper, crumpled up, folded over, pounded flat while parts were still folded over each other and put back on the sheet of paper. Over and over. The universe became…bubbly…at the atomic scale. In addition to distorting any matter so badly that it was unrecognizable, this also incidentally ‘overlapped’ particles on top of other particles, often violating the Pauli exclusion principle, which resulted in…well, as your narrator promised no more scientific theories, let’s just say really bad things happened.

Anything living in that radius died instantly, of course. Living things are much more Euclidean.

### 2018 CE

“You killed him!” Daisy heard from Elana as she sped towards the sound of the gunshot. “Why didn’t you use an ICER?”

“He saw our faces. We can’t be identified, it would make the work extremely hard. They’d find our lab.”

“Fitz-”

“Ah, there’s your mistake. I’m not Fitz anymore.”

“I…what?”

“Fitz handed things over to me.” the calm voice explained. “I’m the Doctor.”

Daisy rounded the corner.

“The Doctor?” said Elana. “What are you…talking about?”

“From the Framework? I don’t believe we’ve been introduced. But I have most of Fitz’s memories. You’re Elana Rodriguez. “ Cold eyes turned towards Daisy. “Skye. Pleased to see you again.”

Daisy and Elana stared in disbelief.

“You’re…the Doctor?” Daisy asked.

“Fitz…decided I would be better suited to this task to restore Simmons. I know you don’t trust me, but I’m…merely an aspect of Fitz. I’m not the person you met in the Framework. Not really. I have the same desires as Fitz. Including wanting Simmons back. I just…am willing to use means he isn’t.”

“Right…uh…get Simmons back.” said Elana, looking worried at Daisy. “We…you…you probably should put the gun down now? So we can talk.”

Daisy just stared, thinking what the Doctor had done the last time. To her. The…horrible thing. The thing that…had…been required.

The Doctor frowned. “I feel you aren’t on board with this. But it’s…not really your choice, Rodriguez.”

Elana signaled Daisy behind her back while talking. “Right. It’s not we don’t want your help, it’s-” She was interrupted when Daisy quaked her against a wall. She bounced off and slumped to the ground.

The Doctor smiled. “I saw her signal and wondered what you would do. I wondered if you trust me, after…what I did last. To you.” he tilted his head. “But…that needed to be done, didn’t it Skye? So does this.”

Daisy nodded. “That’s why I did it. We agreed, when we all started, that we’d…get them back. Any means necessary. Just like when you cut the implant out of me. I’m not…happy you killed some innocent security guard, but you’re our only hope. And if the original you can’t cope with it, you’re a better choice anyway. If Elana can’t see that, she doesn’t belong on the team. We’ll lock her up and let her go when we’ve left. Just…agree that we will at least _try_ to have…low casualties.” she paused. “And my name is Daisy, not Skye.”

“Daisy. Apologies. If you will agree that _some_ killing is required, I will agree to keep them to _only_ the required.” he tilted his head, and carefully pulled out an ICER, made sure Daisy saw what he was doing with it, and shot Elana with it. “We’ll collect her on the way out, stick her in a containment unit. See? We don’t need to kill her, so we won’t. I can work within parameters.” He looked around. “And…now…Lang’s van should be this way.”

Daisy had known things were horribly wrong inside her friend since that moment of horror on Enoch’s ship, when almost everyone disappeared, and had tried to talk about them several times, but hadn’t been able. She hadn’t quite realized it had gotten to this point, but…maybe the logic made sense. Maybe the Doctor was needed to fix things.

### Informational Interlude

Over the next century, the gravitonium slowly bled off into the Lightforce and Darkforce dimensions, reducing the rotating blob to nothing. By then, the distortion had basically shredded things at the molecular level, leaving a sort of fine mist. Across the entire area of space.

And left behind, there’s now just the GRPO-395 Anomaly.

People can still see the gravitonium in the shifting silver fringe of GRPO-395, which, thanks to the wonky geometry, is actually the center. The glowing white part that looks like the center isn’t really a ‘thing’ at all or located in this universe, it’s just a distortion of what is probably best understood as a pinpoint hole in the universe that permanently connects the Lightforce and Darkforce sides, generating light. The gravitational distortion of the light by the gravitonium is making that pinpoint look like a large wobbling oval instead of the singularity it is.

As the Doctor had explained the plan to Daisy, had explained what would happen to reality, he’d quoted Fitz. “Science, biatch.”

### 2013 CE

Daisy had just knocked out an incredibly young-faced version of herself about to enter Ian Quinn’s estate. For the fifth time.

The Doctor had had the same realization that Simmons had when she realized Fitz was still out there. That paradoxical time travel created temporal duplicates.

And they needed a _lot_ of gravitonium.

Hopefully this time she could get though killing fewer people, but honestly, people stopped seeming real at some point.

She wondered what that past version of herself would have thought of her. A super-powered time pirate, stealing resources from everywhere and everywhen. And…killing a lot of people. Daisy had tried to keep the amount down, but some of it was inevitable. She was pretty sure that was why Elana had left, the killing. She couldn’t remember exactly. It was hard to remember Before, back when she had a family, but she was sure the killing had something to do with Elana leaving. Everyone else disappeared, it turned out even May had when they got back to earth. And Coulson had died but they already knew that was coming. But Elena had survived. And then she’d left over the killing. That and the insistence that the Doctor was…crazy.

Which he was. The Doctor was clearly the result of some sort of psychotic break. He claimed he was just the resurfacing memories from when Fitz was in the Framework, but that claim was just an even greater indicator of psychosis.

But…at this point, she’d almost forgotten that. She’d forgotten any of the…Before. When she looked at his face, she just saw the Doctor. The cold eyes, the thin lips. She almost forgot what they were trying to do, she found herself attracted to the sheer focus.

When you build your whole life around a madman’s plan, it becomes hard to not fall in love a little bit with the madman.

### Informational Interlude

There’s an object that is called the GRPO-395 Anomaly on the standardized space maps.

In addition to scientific theories, it has attracted many myths, ‘just so’ stories explaining how it exists.

The most popular myth is particularly sappy. This myth had been invented entirely by a tour guide on a nearby planet trying to sell sightseeing trips some 600 years ago and repeated and expanded by other merchants in a somewhat harmless attempt to turn the beauty of GRPO-395 into tourist money.

It is a massive coincidence that this myth was, at the core, _also_ somewhat correct.

### 2023 CE, another universe

The refugee Asgardians, after their uneventful trip to Earth five years ago, had been very helpful in opening the Earth up to the universe at large, and the Zephyr had been at the forefront of it. This particular trip was the Fitz-Simmons fifth wedding anniversary (Depending on which one you counted) also, so they were treating it like a vacation with ‘Captain Daisy’s’ permission.

“Ooo, Fitz, Daisy, come hear this story. It’s like it’s about you two.” said Simmons, talking to the alien who had been trying to sell them a tour of something called the ‘Tear in the Universe’ , spotting space tourists but not knowing they had a ship.

After Fitz and Daisy heard the story, which had involved Gods and Goddesses and space battles and all sorts of added nonsense, Simmons laughed at their dubious expression and summarized. “A man lost the woman he loved, she fell out of the universe somehow, and the man went crazy and got a female friend of theirs, who happened to be a Goddess, to tear a hole in the universe so he could go after her. Get it? It’s like us.”

Daisy laughed “I’m not really a Goddess, but cool. We should take the Zephyr, go see it.” she turned to the alien. “I assume that’s not a true story. Traditional damsel in distress mythology. But is there any basis for it?”

“Probably not. The planet that used to be there, Titan, was experiencing a population crisis, and we suspect they…did something by accident.” he admitted, as his tour sale now seemed unlikely at the mention of the fact they had a ship, but there were no other customers at hand, and if he went the more historic route instead of the romantic one he had started with, maybe he could point them towards a partner of his who operated a shop down the way. “And there are many variations of the story if you don’t care for that one. I know a place that sells a book that collects all the known knowledge about the Tear, from current scientific theories to myths.” he pointed.

### 2007 CE

“It didn’t work!” said the Doctor, and slammed a fist against the wall as they watched Thanos’s fleet escape. “He managed to escape. No matter what we do, he manages to stay a step ahead of is.” he sighed and looked at Daisy. “I…miscalculated how long it would take. I…wish I’d studied more physics at the Academy, as your Fitz did, but Ophelia had me focus more on biotech to help her escape the Framework. Fitz knows this better than me. But I can’t turn this body back over to him until the job is finished. And we can keep doing things until we get them right. Thanks to time travel. Just…let me think of another plan.”

Daisy silently sighed at the Doctor’s justifications. She wondered if he was trying to convince her or him about the source of the problem, the reason behind the Doctor’s scattered knowledge of quantum physics. She knew he’d get it. She knew how smart he was. She came up behind him, putting her arms around his chest. “So, until then-come to bed.”

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sleeping with the Doctor. Mostly because she didn’t know how long anything was anymore. She’d started having gray hairs a while back. That meant she was…probably at least 40? Physically? So much time travel. So many times repeating days, or weeks, or even months.

She did know the sex hadn’t started until after she realized that they weren’t going to make it. The plan wasn’t ever for ‘them’ to get back from this. The plan was to alter history enough for some other Fitz and Simmons to live happily ever after with some other Daisy by their side. A universe without Thanos.

And she really missed Fitz and Simmons, and the Doctor seemed to really miss Simmons. Which didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense no matter how you looked at it, but Daisy just went with it. So…falling into bed together had seemed logical. The…sex had been interesting, logistically, thank to the Doctor’s being a bit…touchy about his-

She laughed a little, realizing she’d thought about his ‘injuries’. Another lie the Doctor told himself. Even Daisy was internalizing the lies a bit, as someone who’d started as a dorky nerd who Daisy assumed couldn’t hurt a fly and who dressed in jumpers like they were going out of style had turned into a man who inspired fear in everyone he met, and she’d lost the mental connection to who he used to be before, who she barely remembered. Someone who she barely remembered as an animated over-excited chattering of hand movements and scientific information. The Doctor never chattered.

She sometimes wondered if there’d been a preexisting attraction between them, or not. Before. She’d seen the way Fitz and Simmons looked at each other and had never considered trying to get into the way of it, right? She thought, although she vaguely remembered a few moments where their might have been something, a touch, a look, moments shared as they were in danger together. Something that might have happened if Fitz and Simmons hadn’t come in a matched set? She thought. She couldn’t think about Before too much, it hurt.

Maybe there hadn’t been anything there, she was just imagining it. The two halves of Fitzsimmons had been forced apart, one apparently gone forever, leaving a hole in the universe. And the remaining half had fallen to pieces and been reinvented as…someone else. Because the truth was impossible to deal with.

And…even broken things could get lonely.

She certainly had. She’d once had a family, but they’d all disappeared into dust. But, somewhere, somehow, she was going to make sure some other Daisy keep them.

The Doctor turned around and she stared into his brown eyes for a second. Then his gaze softened, almost back to how he had looked Before, and he shrugged. “Why not?” and kissed her. Then his eyes opened wide. “You know, there’s one place we know for sure he is.”

### 1092 CE

Her newly awakened friend blinked at Daisy and looked around the alien hotel room. “What? Where am I? What happened?”

Daisy suddenly found herself trying not to cry as she heard that accent for the first time in a long time. The Doctor’s accent had flattened out to almost American, she didn’t know why. “Well, you had a plan to keep Thanos from doing what he did. And we’ve spent a lot of time doing it. Well, a few different plans, but none of them worked out…he always gets the Stones and snaps his fingers anyway, and our meddling sometimes even made it earlier. But this plan will work. It already has. There’s no way out.”

“A lot of time? What are you talking about? What’s the date? Why don’t I remember things?”

“Uh…that’s a complicated question to answer. Like…1092. Like, March, I think? They don’t use the Earth calendar here.”

“1092…you mean, we’ve traveled in time? Why is the last thing I remember is breaking into a storage place with you and Elana? To steal the time machine I thought might be there? That I guess was there? Lang’s van?”

“That’s because you…decided you were the Doctor.” Daisy explained.

“What? From the Framework?!”

“Yes. For…I’m not really sure. About a decade? You had a psychotic break, I think.”

“You…a decade! You…let me…think I was…the Doctor, for a decade?! How…how could you do that?” 

Daisy frowned. She was suddenly wondering if this request was a mistake. “Because only he had a solution. Only he had the will. He was the only way to get them back.”

“Only…he….that’s crazy, Daisy. And where- Ah! What happened to my hair!”

Daisy carefully kept her expression blank, just in case that discovery would lead to the discovery of other changes she didn’t want to explain. They both had some bioengineered changes, some cybernetic changes, some alien ones. And the Doctor had had a couple of purely cosmetic ones that would probably be the most upsetting of all, to better make his body match the…reality he’d built for himself. It’s why she was glad that there were no mirrors in their room…guests were supposed to toggle the wall display to a reflective mode for a mirror, but only Daisy knew that. “The Doctor thought a shaved head was more menacing. It’s okay. It will be over in a second. I just wanted to say…goodbye. And wish you the best of luck in the next life.” said Daisy. Unable to cope with this reminder of how things used to be, she turned the sound up on the viewing wall, because she had watched this speech before and knew the part they were getting to, and suddenly wanted this to be over.

“…impartial, rich and poor, healthy and sick alike.” the translated audio relayed from the man at a podium on the screen, speaking in front of the planet’s governmental assembly. “Including us. Everyone is assigned to one of the two groups. Randomly.” There was a pause, as the entire assembly started muttering, unsure of where this was going.

“What do you mean, goodbye? The next life? What the hell is going on, Daisy? What are we watching?” 

Daisy picked up the remote detonator. The ship was on a timer to go off in the next five minutes that couldn’t be disabled, and the speaker was going to argue for his position for over an hour. But the device could be triggered early and Daisy and the Doctor had thought it would be poetic to do it right here. She’d thought maybe to spend a few minutes explaining things, but…she couldn’t deal with this…this…Before person. It made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. Think about uncomfortable truths. That maybe this… hadn’t been a reasonable solution. That maybe she should have stopped this. But it didn’t matter now. It was done.

“And we flip a coin and euthanize one of the group.” the speaker said. Daisy mouthed along, she knew this speech so well.

Utter silence filled the air for a second, and then someone, later identified as a man named Marlorps, who was the Second Deputy Minister of Interstellar Commerce, a man who wouldn’t even rate a footnote in history except for this famous moment, muttered a statement to his neighbor that their inadvertently open mic picked up, forever giving the current speaker his nickname. “Has Thanos gone completely mad?”

“Daisy!” said the increasingly panicked Brit, finally finding a reflective surface and discovering other changes. “What…happened to me? I-”

“We _all_ went mad,” said Daisy to the screen. She sometimes wished she had a Doctor inside her, or could invent one, but she supposed everyone went insane in their own way. So she pushed the button. 

In orbit above them, the Zephyr expanded the gravitonium and tore a hole in the universe.

### 2023 CE, another universe

“Hey, lovernerds.” Daisy hopped up as Fitz and Simmons got back to the Zephyr from their romantic dinner that Daisy had left them to, and waved the book they’d bought shortly before. “Interesting book.”

“Oh?” said Fitz. “Does it have any real physics in it instead of stories?”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “Why did I know that would be your first question? It does, dork, but I don’t understand them. I was reading the myths. There’s, like, dozens of them, and they say a lot about the societies that came up with them. And, you know, that story that dude told us was wrong? I mean, it’s how they tell it _now_, but that’s after sexism got a hold of it and made the guy the hero.” She showed them the page with the drawings.

### 2018 CE

“Daisy. Daisy. Over here.” the whispering came from Elana in the containment module as Daisy walked by. “How’d you get out?”

“I wasn’t ever in. I’m the one who put you there. Don’t worry, we’ll let you go after we leave.”

“…are you insane?”

“Maybe.” said Daisy. “If it’s insane to think we just need the Doctor to save everyone. He saved us all last time by forcing my implant out.”

“That’s not…Daisy, you know that’s not the Doctor, right? Not that you…should be working with the Doctor, but that’s not him. Obviously.”

“Smart enough to be. I say, if he thinks he is, he is. He’s the only one who’s smart enough and willing to do what it takes.”

“‘He?!’ What do you mean, ‘he’? That’s not… Daisy….You can’t let Simmons just…run around thinking she’s the Doctor, killing people. Not even to get Fitz and everyone back. She’s had some sort of…mental collapse and gone crazy, latched on to the idea she’s the Doctor as a…cooping mechanism-”

Daisy turned off the intercom mid-sentence. “Well, maybe we’re all mad here.”

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea at the end of AoS season five. It become strangely more plausible at the start of AoS season 6, where Daisy and Simmons had, indeed, gone on a crazy quest to rescue Fitz. So I started to write it.
> 
> And then we got Inescapeable, which broke my brain so badly I had to stop and regroup for a bit. Like, I'd always headcanoned Simmons as someone who was incredibly repressed, and actually could snap one day, but I didn't realize the writers agreed with me to the point of literally putting a repression-monster made of pain and anger in her psyche! Wow. Just...wow. So...I guess, in this fic, she put that monster in a Doctor skin and pointed it at the universe.
> 
> Some people will probably try to argue this is F/F instead of F/M, but the Doctor is male. Even when he's being played by Simmons. Whatever. The relationship isn’t a bit part of it.


End file.
